


The Path We Follow

by crossroadswrite



Series: beAUtiful tropes (au-a-thon challenge) [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Divergence, Dean Winchester's Self-Worth Issues, Happy Ending, M/M, Week 6, goes along canon until somewhere in season 5, i don't really go into detail about anything so you'll be cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3313934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossroadswrite/pseuds/crossroadswrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmates and the soulmate bond or mark is in no way perfect. First of all, the odds of getting one aren’t all that high, secondly it can show itself anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five which causes a lot of stress in some people and a sudden crashing sense of loss when you pass the twenty-five mark and your wrist remains blank.</p><p>To add to all of this, the soulmate bond depends heavily on life choices, so if you make a choice bad enough the soulbond can break. It means that whatever choice you’ve made tore you apart from the path that would lead you to your ‘mate and it’s usually really rare for it to pop up again.</p><p>All these facts make it so that the bond is something not rare but really hard to accomplish.</p><p>Which is why, when Dean turned seventeen and suddenly had an electric blue band around his wrist made of delicate intricate tiny sigils, he’s at a complete loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path We Follow

**Author's Note:**

> based off the prompt
> 
> ➥[soulbonds that just appear once a requirement is met – so once both parties are a certain age, they are able to recognise their soulmate even if they’ve actually known each other for years au](http://legolras.tumblr.com/post/85071769133)

Soulmate marks don’t appear until your coming of age, meaning that they don’t appear in your skin until your body decides that it’s good and ready for you to develop a supposedly healthy long lasting relationship with the being your soul has a kinship with.

Which is to say that there’s not a defined age for them to appear, it’s not like you turn eighteen and suddenly _bam_ , mark on your risk, meet your bae, you’re good to get married and ride off into the sunset, life solved.

Soulmates and the soulmate bond or mark is in no way perfect. First of all, the odds of getting one aren’t all that high, secondly it can show itself anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five which causes a lot of stress in some people and a sudden crashing sense of loss when you pass the twenty-five mark and your wrist remains blank.

To add to all of this, the soulmate bond depends heavily on life choices, so if you make a choice bad enough the soulbond can break. It means that whatever choice you’ve made tore you apart from the path that would lead you to your ‘mate and it’s usually really rare for it to pop up again.

All these facts make it so that the bond is something not rare but really hard to accomplish.

Which is why, when Dean turned seventeen and suddenly had an electric blue band around his wrist made of delicate intricate tiny sigils, he’s at a complete loss.

At seventeen Dean Winchester is pretty sure he has made enough bad decisions and will make so many more that he shouldn’t have a soulmate bond. He doesn’t think he even deserves the damn thing but lo and behold there it is. More beautiful and brighter than the cracked black band his father has around his own wrist.

The first time John sees the mark he grips Dean’s arm tight enough to leave a purple handprint behind and examines it, glazed eyes making an effort to focus.

“You poor bastard,” John shakes his hand, letting go of Dean’s arm with an ugly laugh, “it’s going to break you just like it did me, don’t even think you’re gonna walk away from this family for something like _that_ , boy.”

“Of course not,” Dean says readily, shaking out his arm so his jacket falls over his mark.

“Good,” John praises, makes Dean feel a little better, before walking out with a careless comment thrown over his shoulder for Dean to watch over Sammy.

Sam, of course, finds it amazing and all kids of awesome, going on and on about how he can’t wait to meet Dean’s soulmate and how pretty she’ll be and how he can’t wait to find his own.

Years pass and Dean doesn’t find his soulmate. He doesn’t even _try_ to find them, paying the mark no mind and only focusing on his father’s orders and how much more distant he’s became after Sammy left for college.

It only passes his mind from time to time and for those fleeting moments he allows himself to think all of the what ifs he wants before he reaches for the nearest bottle.

And then his dad disappears and he needs to recruit Sammy to help him find him, because he can’t stand the thought of being alone and because you don’t leave family behind not for anything, you die for them if that’s what you have to do.

He makes a lot of mistakes, takes a lot of wrong turns when he’s looking for his dad, when he’s chasing the yellow eyed demon, when his brother dies on his hands and he’s stepping up to a crossroads demon to sell his soul, when he spends a year chasing his tail and the hounds of hell still come for him.

During all of this not once the mark disappears from his wrist, doesn’t flicker or stop emitting that almost ethereal glow with its tiny sigils.

Dean’s terrified that it didn’t just fucking disappear; Dean is forever grateful that it didn’t just disappear, especially when there’s a twisted demon with sharp wicked things that he calls toys and a world of pain is his life.

Even when he picks up the knife and turns to the poor bastards that are just like him and nothing like him, the mark doesn’t disappear; sometimes even burns a little brighter like it’s trying to burn the evil right out of Dean as soon as it touches him.

Dean doesn’t believe in salvation, not after forty years deep in the inner circle of hell, torturing souls and getting tortured in turns, being a _favorite_ in someone else’s sick game.

And then it’s almost like in the beginning of times when God said “Let there be light” and there was, sudden and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, vaguely human shaped and reaching over to him, for him, ghosts of what could be fingertips brushing around his wrist before they trail up his arm, grip him and raise him up and away from perdition.

When Dean comes to again he’s buried alive and the first thing he thinks is _of course_. Because of course he is, that’s just his life. His second thought is that if he’s a demon he’ll have to make some hunter off him.

All the same he finds himself digging his way out of his grave, after he was rescued from hell.

As soon as he’s topside he takes a lungful of air, heaves himself upwards and just lays on the floor for a couple of minutes so the reality of what happens sinks in.

Then he brings both hands to his face and checks his fingernails to see if broke any; he didn’t, which is a shame because it’d give an entire other level to the comeback ‘no, but I broke a nail crawling my way out of hell’.

His nails are in perfect condition, aside from the dirt, his palms lost their calluses, his skin although dirty feels smooth and lacking all of the scars that Dean used to have a love-hate relationship with.

The mark around his wrist catches his eye, being a duller blue like before. When it used to be light now it’s sky-blue, it could almost be the color of someone’s eyes.

Dean decides he’s been laying here for too long and decides to heave himself up and start walking, he wonders how through even a colossal, stupidly bad decision like this his mark remain in place.

He doesn’t wonder on it for too long. He doesn’t deserve to have it in the first place.

Even so, he can’t help to be relieved that the path he’s following is the right one, the one that can lead him to someone that will share that kinship, that bond of potential love and loyalty.

This path, his always destined to be path, leads him to a barn, a knife on his hand and his pulse beating double time as he waits for whatever it is that dragged him from down deep to appear.

Dean will do as his father told him: shoot first, ask questions later.

So he shoots whatever it is and then he stabs it and then he learns that its name is Castile and he’s an angel of the Lord and then he has his breath knocked out of him, his hand dropping away from the knife in horror.

Dean takes a step back, watches the angel tilt his head curiously, sharp eyes focused on him.

“You, uh, you have one of these?” he asks carefully, holding up his right left wrist and showing it to Cas – since he’s facing his soulmate he thinks it’s okay to treat him on a first name basis, nicknames are only appropriate.

Castiel grips his wrist and jerks Dean forward with a strength he’s probably not aware he’s applying, before bringing Dean’s wrist close to his face and tilting it so and so, in a way that seems like he could be reading. He then turns wide eyes at Dean, the glass in the icy blue of them slowly breaking and turning into a storm at sea.

“Dean,” he says, like a prayer this time, thumb running smoothly over Dean’s mark.

Dean should be freaked out, except for the fact that this is his soulmate and he’s an angel, because _of course he is_. That’s just Dean Winchester’s life for you.

He takes a deep breath, opens his mouth to speak, blinks involuntarily and the next second Castiel is gone and he’s standing in the middle of a  barn holding his arm up like some sort of idiot and looking at where his soulmate was just a second ago, the faint traces of ozone coloring the air.

Dean sighs heavily and drops his arm. Nothing could be easy, not for him because this is still his life. He lets his arm drop and decides to keep trudging on.

 _“It’s going to break you.”_ He reminds himself. That’s what soulmates do when they’re gone. They break you, and honestly he thinks he’s been tossed around and kicked enough for a lifetime he doesn’t need any other sort of thing to fuck with him, especially not one as powerful as a soulmate. There _is_ a reason why soulmate suicide rates are higher than the general non-marked population.

He keeps on his path, the path of the apocalypse and Castiel comes back. He’s here as much as he can, he tells Dean, “I’ll be here as long as you live and then I’ll join you in paradise,” he says it so matter-of-factly, like that’s just a thing that _is_.

Dean doesn’t question him, not out loud, already tripping all over himself to get Castiel’s attention, his time, bring him a little closer to humanity than angelhood.

It’s hard, their path. It’s filled with blood and shattered trust and carefully built hope. It’s nothing like those stupid advertisements and romcoms on TV where the guy always gets the girl and they hold hands and ride off into the sunset, hands clasped together and marks touching, a physical manifestation of their bond. It’s not immediately love and trust and kittens.

At first is distrust, and then a partnership built on frail glass that will lead to cemented trust. Much later comes love, even if most people affirm that with the bond the love was already there, but there’s not love without trust. Especially if you’re a Winchester.

Adding to all their hardships, which in the grand scheme of things for them are little problems, there’s the devil to put back into the ground and angels on their tail, crazy, ridiculous plans to stop the apocalypse and say yes or no to the two hottest angels right now.

It doesn’t end well. It can’t end well not for them, that’s not how it works. It ends in blood, Castiel graceless on his knees in a dirty cemetery, Bobby with a badly broken leg and his little brother with a betrayed expression, Michael having just thrown his own little brother into the cage using Dean’s hands as weapons and then himself being dragged down, Castiel’s grace burned out to cast Michael out and bring Dean back up.

It would never end well for them. That’s not the type of story whatever cosmic being who dictates their lives is writing, but it does end with a sense of contentment.

After that, months have to pass before Sam talks to Dean again; longer than it takes for Bobby’s leg to heal. It’s weeks before Castiel has his first break down from his fall, the harshness of humanity slamming into him. It’s three years until Dean says enough, with shaky unsure words, feeling like he’s betrayed everything his father ever taught him, and they settle down in a little house in a little town where Cas finds peace in his roses and petunias and whatever else flowers he plants that make Dean sneeze and where Dean has his mechanic shop and where they hunt things no more than two hours away if something ever comes up.

It’s one or two decades before Dean is sitting on his porch, slowly rocking the swing and holding Cas’ hand, the bond mark that had appeared on Cas’ hand after he gave up his grace touching Dean’s own mark.

It’s still not perfect, because nothing is. Cas still looks at the skies wistfully and hurts his throat trying to talk enochian with human vocal cords, Dean still has nightmares about Hell, Sam doesn’t visit often enough, but he’s alright with his new job and new wife and still no mark on his wrist.

But the thing they never tell you is that perfection from movies and dime a dozen romance novels doesn’t exist, there’s only happiness, contentment, pride and love for what you have and get to keep.

Dean will lean over and kiss Castiel’s temple while Cas reads by his side paying attention to the words while Dean pays attention to their kids running around like they’re supposed to.

His path was never meant to be easy, it was hard for most part of it, more like climbing a mountain all made of cutting edges than anything else, but man he can’t help but think that it was worth the view from the other side of it, where it’s all green grass ‘till where your vision can reach and baby blue sky, both colors smoothly joining in the horizon like they’re supposed to.

Dean squeezes Cas’ hands, smiles and brushes their wrists together, a point of contact as a reminder of what they have. One of his kids tags the other and promptly dashes off with a bright careless laugh.

Yeah, he decides, it was definitely worth the view.

**Author's Note:**

> [boop](http://crossroadswrite.tumblr.com)


End file.
